At today's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) questioned Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos.
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Questions asked in this interview
12
0:48Sarandos, how many subscribers does Netflix have in the United States?
1:14So, if the merger went through, how many subscribers would you anticipate having?
1:37So, if you're at 90 million now with Netflix, by any measure, you'd be north of 100 million depending on the overlap. Is that fair to say?
1:49Does more market power typically lead to higher prices or lower prices?
2:10In your view, are monopolies a good thing in America?
2:23Should the American people be concerned about a monopoly in entertainment and streaming?
2:40In the streaming market, paid subscription streaming, what percent do you have of the market?
4:06... at home to, how should they feel even remotely confident that if this merger happens, the combined entity would not simply be a propaganda outlet pushing one particular political view with much greater market power than you have now?
And I thought of saying that, but I chose not to. But now I did. You had the hanging punchline, and Amy, I needed you to finish it because it does in fact describe our place of work.
All right. This is an $83 billion merger. It's a big deal. Entertainment matters, content matters. Mr. Sarandos, how many subscribers does Netflix have in the United States?
Yeah. Well, we don't publicly disclose our HBO number, but the HBO subscribers in the US are roughly 50 million. But remember, 80% of those subscribers already subscribe to Netflix. So, there's significant overlap there.
Just to be clear, while monopolies are not good, we are nowhere near dominant, let alone a monopoly. We have 9% market share that will grow to 10. If you wanted to contort yourself...
Well, but that's defining the market the way you want. Obviously an antitrust assessment, the market definition is critical. In the streaming market, paid subscription streaming, what percent do you have of the market?
27 more exchanges in this transcript
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Sarandos, T. (2026, February 3). 'Are We Right Now On Stolen Land?': Ted Cruz Invokes Billie Eilish When Grilling Ted Sarandos [Interview transcript]. Forbes Breaking News. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/681524/
MLA
Theodore Sarandos. "'Are We Right Now On Stolen Land?': Ted Cruz Invokes Billie Eilish When Grilling Ted Sarandos." Forbes Breaking News, 3 Feb. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/681524/.
BibTeX
@misc{sarandos2026_681524,
author = {Theodore Sarandos},
title = {'Are We Right Now On Stolen Land?': Ted Cruz Invokes Billie Eilish When Grilling Ted Sarandos},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Forbes Breaking News. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {feb},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/681524/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
